Danielle Bruen

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Danielle’s research is all about attempting to revolutionise diabetes management. People suffering from this disease are prone to episodes of high (hyper-) or low (hypo-) glycaemic states, meaning that complications relating to the heart, kidneys and nervous systems can occur due to uncontrolled fluctuating glucose levels. Currently, two approaches are used to control glucose levels for diabetic patients, the finger-prick approach and the implanted wearable devices. These approaches are either non-invasive or painless in the case of finger-pricking, or continuous by implementing a wearable device implanted under the skin. Danielle’s goal is to produce a device in which glucose monitoring can be carried out both continuously and non-invasively. Imagine being able to wear a skin patch or a contact lens that could continuously monitor glucose levels. That is what Danielle is working on. She uses boronic acids to chemically sense glucose. These sensors respond to glucose by changes you can see either in the form of fluorescence or colour and can be incorporated inside hydrogels for use in contact lenses or patch-sensing platforms. The change in colour or fluorescence can be interpreted by a mobile phone application, which outputs the specific glucose level simply by capturing an image of the device that displays the change in fluorescence or colour. In this way, the sensors can be used non-invasively and continuously, which is the futuristic goal of current glucose-monitoring methods. Her current research focuses on producing a range of sensors and studying these sensors inside gels in order to choose the best one for a glucose-monitoring application.

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The Insight Centre for Data Analytics is a joint initiative between researchers at Dublin City University, NUI Galway, University College Cork, University College Dublin and other partner institutions. Insight brings together more than 400+ researchers from these institutions, 100m+ funding, and with over 80+ industry partners, to position Ireland at the heart of global data analytics research.